


Sibling Rivalry, Part One

by completelyhopeless



Series: Two Circus Birds [12]
Category: DCU, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-29
Updated: 2014-12-29
Packaged: 2018-03-04 02:42:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2906222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/completelyhopeless/pseuds/completelyhopeless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint gets his hearing and his brother back. He's not sure he wants this, especially when all Barney can do is cause problems with Dick and Bruce forbade them to tell Barney about Batman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sibling Rivalry, Part One

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to call this part one because, well, eventually more of the batfamily will come into this, and Dick will have his hands full like Clint does now. I'm still not sure how Jason will react to Dick as a brother or Clint as one by extension, so that will be interesting to see.
> 
> I liked having fluff, and that was how this part started out, but for some reason Barney and Dick just cannot get along. So they ended up fighting again, worse than before.

* * *

“Well?”

Clint blinked. He'd almost gotten used to the silence, and it was strange to be able to hear again. Dick's voice was like he remembered it. He hadn't forgotten it, but now he had the subtleties as well as the words. He could hear inflection, and he had to admit, he'd missed it. He shouldn't have, because most of the time, people got mean rather than good with what they said, but he could hear Dick's excitement, the way his friend was trying to hold back and not make too big of a deal about the hearing aids in case they didn't work.

“I can hear,” Clint said. He grinned. “You sound like a dork.”

Dick rolled his eyes. “Of course you'd say that. You're such a pain in the—”

“Boys,” Alfred said, and they both looked at him with smiles and a bit of sheepishness. Clint had long since figured out that order in the Wayne house belonged to the butler, not to Bruce or Batman, but he also figured they were all better off that way. One of these days, Bruce would snap, go psycho, and kill everyone. It would just take one battle with Joker too many or something.

Babs said that Batman had almost killed the thugs that came after Dick at the school, and Dick had laughed because he still didn't think Bruce cared that much about him, but Clint could believe it.

“Are you sure they fit well? No irritation? No strange noises or sensations?”

Clint forced a smile for Lucius. The man was one of the nicest men he'd ever met, and he'd been insistent on making these hearing aids not only top of the line, better than anyone else could have, but also _perfect._ Every time Clint had even the smallest problem with them, the man immediately whisked it back to his lab and worked to fix it. He didn't want to complain, because he didn't want the man to have to redo them again.

Not that there was anything wrong with them. There wasn't.

“No, nothing. I don't think I'll have any problem with these at all. They're perfect.”

“Good,” Lucius said with a smile, one he shared with Alfred. Bruce was the only one not smiling. He was brooding, but then Clint didn't know when the man _didn't_ brood. Dick said he was different at the parties, the ones where he put on his playboy act, but Clint had yet to see it—he figured he was lucky—and so all he knew of Bruce was brooding and Batman. 

“Lucius made these special,” Bruce said, and Clint looked at him. “They're already set to work like the communicators Robin and Batman use. You'll be keyed into our frequency.”

“All the time?”

“Yeah, sure, because I so want you knowing when I go to the bathroom,” Dick muttered, shaking his head. “We're not on them all the time, and you can turn them off.”

“What, is your hearing aid one, too?”

Dick shook his head. “No. I don't have one, remember? I'm fine. I have my balance back, and I never lost hearing in my other ear, so I didn't need one.”

Clint frowned. “Were you not doing this because of me? How many times did I tell you it wasn't your fault?”

“When are you going to stop blaming yourself for my parents dying?”

Clint swallowed. He didn't know that he could answer that.

Bruce put his hands on Dick's shoulders. “The surgery is scheduled for next week.”

“What?”

“Dick's hearing is operable. The surgeons will fix it on Tuesday.”

“Oh,” Clint said, and Dick glared up at Bruce.

“It was fine before. I didn't need it,” Dick insisted. He came over to Clint's side and signed using their words, keeping Bruce and the others out of it. _I didn't want him to do it. I'm fine. I don't need it. It's not fair that I can get mine back but you'll need those things for the rest of your life. It's wrong._

“You're an idiot,” Clint told him, hugging him. _I'm glad you can hear again. Really._

* * *

“It's weird, isn't it?” Dick asked, still not used to having stereo sound back. He could have done without it, had been for a while, and he'd had to relearn his balance a _second_ time, which pissed him off, but Bruce wouldn't listen to him, insisted that Robin be at his peak, and so Dick had the surgery.

“Hearing again?”

“Yeah,” Dick said, looking over at Clint. “Does it bother you?”

Clint looked at his hands. “You know we're both still signing? Even though we can speak, and I could read lips before, we're both using sign language without thinking about it.”

“It was our life,” Dick said. He sighed, forcing his hands together so that he couldn't make words with them. “This is... weird, in comparison.”

“You're calling this weird? What about what we did to Coulson?”

“That was fun.”

“Dick, I think being Robin has gone to your head and not in a good way,” Clint told him. Dick reached over and shoved him, and Clint shoved back.

“Alfred will send us down to the batcave if we keep that up.”

Clint snorted. “I'm surprised you're not down there already. It seems like that's all you do anymore. You're either off being Robin or you're training to be him.”

Dick wrapped his arms around his legs. Things had been a lot worse in Gotham lately. He thought they'd seen a record number of breakouts from Arkham and even a couple more supervillains. Plus the sonic gang with alien tech and a few others. Gotham just got worse, and Dick honestly didn't know that it would ever get better. “You know he's an idiot, don't you?”

“What?”

“Bruce. He's dumb. He wouldn't take you with us before because you couldn't hear and it was a liability in the field.” Dick had argued that and lost, like he always did with Bruce. It still made him angry. “That can change, if you want. You have the hearing aids and they're like our comms and—”

“Dick,” Clint began, swallowing. “Have you seen him do anything to find Swordsman? Because I had to stop, and I don't think anyone's looking now. Your parents' killer is out there and no one's doing anything about it, not even the guy who took you in.”

His stomach twisted up, and Dick felt sick. He didn't know how to answer that or what to think. He was still trying to find the words when Alfred came into the room.

“Master Clinton, you have a visitor.”

“Can you please learn to call me Clint, because I—” Clint stopped, staring. “Barney?”

“I knew I knew where to find you, little brother.”

* * *

“Are they looking for me?” Clint asked, looking at his brother after they were alone. Dick had followed Alfred out of the room, and while a part of him was grateful, another part wasn't. He wasn't ready to be alone with Barney. He didn't know that he would ever be ready, not after he'd put an arrow in him and sent him to the hospital. “For the guard? I kept meaning to do something about it, but it's been... It's been crazy here. I just barely got hearing aids that would work, and before that I was—”

“Hearing aids?” Barney demanded. “What happened to you?”

“If you knew where I was, didn't you know about that, too?” Clint asked, folding his arms over his chest. “The school was attacked. Those freaks used sonic bombs on us, and I lost my hearing. So did Dick.”

Barney grunted. Clint should have known he'd take that news badly. Overprotective jealous idiot.

“You can't blame Dick for this, Barney. It wasn't his fault. It was just stupid bad luck, and if you do anything to him because of it, I'll put another arrow in you, I swear I will,” Clint warned him. “You got off easy last time—and if you want to know where the money for your hospital bills came from—”

“You took this guy Wayne's charity?”

“No,” Clint ground out, angry. He wanted to smack his brother. Barney was being so stupid. “Dick got that out of the trust fund his parents left him. You owe him, not Wayne. Though yeah, I owe Wayne, because he had these hearing aids custom made for me, and I needed them. The doctors said my hearing was completely gone. Bruce wouldn't accept that.”

Barney's jaw tightened, and Clint could tell that he was angry, but he couldn't argue this time. He didn't have any foundation for it. His pride was hurt, that part of him that said that only he had a right to take care of them, but Clint hoped he'd get over it soon. He was tired of it.

“It's not bad here. Not at all. The prissy school is the only place where people act like we're a charity case. Bruce is a decent guy, almost never here. Alfred's a bit fussy, but he cooks good and makes sure we're okay. Dick and I have the run of the house, can do almost anything we want. I have an archery course set up in the backyard, Dick has this whole acrobatic course downstairs—”

“And what does Wayne get out of having the two of you here?”

Robin, Clint thought, because when he _did_ think about it, he thought that was what Bruce and Batman wanted the most—Robin. The guy didn't even notice how most of the time he talked about Robin, not about Dick, how maybe Dick wasn't the same person. Robin was somehow better than Dick, and Clint hated that because Dick was his friend, the one worth knowing and caring about. Robin was just an act. He wasn't all that real. He was a mask, a costume, just like the one Dick wore to be Robin.

Clint couldn't tell Barney any of that, though. Batman wasn't his secret to tell, and while he didn't want to admit it to himself, he was afraid that Barney wouldn't respect that secret, not for Bruce, but more importantly, not for Dick. The idea of giving those sick freaks from Arkham Dick's real identity, the things they'd do to the so-called Boy Wonder—No. That would _not_ happen. Clint would never let that happen.

“I don't care what he gets out of it,” Clint said. “He's good to Dick and he's good to me, and he doesn't ask for anything he shouldn't get in return. He doesn't hurt us, and he teaches us stuff. None of the rest of it matters.”

“You sure about that, Clint?”

“I know one thing for sure,” Clint said. “I've been in a lot of worse places, and I wouldn't go back to any of them. Not that orphanage, not the circus with Swordsman, and not where we were with Trickshot. This place... I'd come back here if I had a choice.”

“I suppose that means you won't leave.”

“I'm not planning on it, no.”

* * *

“Master Richard! Cease that at once!”

Bruce moved in between the two boys, almost regretting his decision to train Robin in any kind of martial art, because that and years of nights fighting against the worst Gotham had to offer had given him an unfair advantage against the older boy. Bruce didn't know if it was because Barney had recently been in the hospital or not, but Dick had won their fight, almost putting the older Barton right back in there with his bare hands.

If he'd had the sticks Bruce had given him, the damage would have been a hell of a lot worse. As it was, he didn't know how they'd explain this to a doctor.

“Calm yourself, please,” Alfred said, trying to soothe the boy as Dick struggled in Bruce's arms. “You do not need to continue this fight.”

“Yes, I do! You don't know what he said about—”

“Dick,” Bruce cut in, using a harsh tone, coming close to his Batman voice. He knew that the boy responded best to Batman's orders, not Alfred's gentle admonitions or Bruce's words of caution. It was Batman that kept Robin in line. “Stop it. Now.”

The boy slumped in Bruce's arms.

“You know better than to react like this. Especially to words. Look at what you did. You could have done more than hurt him. Is that really what you want?”

Dick glared at Barney, and the older boy managed to flip him off despite the bruises and what looked like a broken hand.

“Barney provoked him,” Clint said, looking between his brother and his friend, shaking his head. He seemed to think talking was betraying one or both of them, and he might even have been scared of what his friend was capable of. “He did. He just sat there the entire time baiting Dick. Damn it, Barney. Why'd you have to—you're such a—don't die, you idiot.”

Dick closed his eyes with a wince. “I didn't mean to hurt him that much. I just lost my temper. I didn't mean to—”

“You need to learn to control yourself, Dick. Now go,” Bruce said, letting go of his ward. “We need to see to Barney.”

The boy nodded, turning away and running from the room. Bruce turned to Clint. The other boy lowered his head.

“I don't understand,” Clint admitted, his voice choked up with tears he hadn't shed. He looked at his brother. “It's like... Something flips on, and Barney can't stop hating Dick, and he won't stop, and Dick tries, but he's not immune. He might have been better off if he was deaf because maybe he wouldn't have done anything then. I couldn't stop them.”

“It is not your fault, Master Clinton,” Alfred told him. “However, if I may, I would like your assistance with your brother.”

“It would have been different if I could have told him the truth. About you, Bruce. About what you really do,” Clint said, eyes hard. “If I had, he wouldn't think the wrong thing about you and Dick.”

Bruce shook his head. He'd had no choice in Dick's friend knowing his secret, but he did not want it going beyond Alfred, Lucius, Dick, and Clint. “No.”

Clint sighed. “Then I suppose you better find a way to explain it to Dick because Barney and I won't be able to stay.”


End file.
